Humanity

During the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast last week, President Obama said, “At critical junctures throughout our history, it’s often been men and women of faith who’ve helped to move this country forward.” Unfortunately, it appears that President Obama’s deference toward religion has taken a turn toward extending the myth that religion was a steady force for progress when religion was, at best, a mixed blessing.

One of my favorite parts about the tech revolution is the sheer amount of data that we, as end users, generate. I’m thrilled when companies or organizations use data, voluntarily offered by their users, to write impromptu market research reports. It’s even more exciting when market research isn’t their core competency.

Becoming a student of Futures Studies (FS) is a challenging endeavor that should be navigated not only by the academic leaders and professors, but also personally by the students.

Today's atheists have come a long way from the days of Madalyn Murray O'Hair. For those that remember her, O'Hair was the quintessential angry atheist. Her days were filled with combating religion, undermining faith, and doing so with a caustic wit.

Last week, my roommate bought a Kindle. Since then, he hasn’t stopped talking about it. Mainly, he’s wanted to get me to borrow it to read Henry Hazlitt‘s book Economics in One Lesson. The book, published in 1946, is an introduction to free market economics, and is a seminal text on economic principles. Tax season being upon us, I filed my taxes last night. Afterwards, I started reading Hazlitt’s book. His “one lesson” seemed pointedly relevant to this time of year.

A regional business newspaper, the Valley Business Report, is sponsoring a Foresight Workshop for business people in May in Mission, Texas. This will be about futures/foresight methods and how to apply those methods in business, particularly in small business. This is a four-hour workshop, which allows business people to attend in the morning and be back in their offices in the afternoon.
The format that I’m planning is a personal futures approach, then a discussion of how each tool or method can be applied in a small business. As a result, I’m working on a supplemental workbook for small business.

In spite of, or perhaps because of, Matthew Broderick thinking that yelling “Learn!” at a computer will actually make it do so, WarGames is a pretty fantastic movie. Released in 1983, the science-fiction film tells the story of David Lightman, a computer hacker played by Broderick, who accidentally finds his way into a military supercomputer programmed to predict outcomes of nuclear war. Lightman gets the computer to run a nuclear war simulation, which causes an international nuclear missile scare and almost single-handedly starts World War III.

Some very exciting developments are underway in the realm of hydroponic agriculture, i.e. the growing of crops in fertilized water without the use of soil. Grown in ultra clean, climate regulated environments inside warehouses or skyscrapers, crops could be spared both natural contamination (insects, infections etc) and pesticides, to make them entirely clean, even more so than organic crops.